Fine. This was how the game was played? Cool. He was used to relying on himself and his instincts in the field . . . and everything was pulling him toward Isaac.

The question was: where was Devina? Assuming she was after Isaac, she’d be searching for a way into him so her parasitic nature could take him over and she could ultimately own him forever in Hell after she killed him.

Jim refocused on his angels. “If Devina is possessing someone, is there a way to tell? Any markers? Reference points?”

At least then he could get a bead on her.

“Sometimes,” Eddie said. “But she can wipe away her fingerprints, so to speak—and now that she knows me and Ad are with you, she’ll be extra careful. However, there are some clean souls she’ll never touch, and those glow.”

“Glow? You mean like . . .” Shit, that blond attorney who’d taken Isaac home with her had had a light all around her body—which was why when Jim had seen her, he’d stared at her as he had. “Like a halo?”

“Exactly like that.”

Well, at least there was one thing working in their favor. He’d assumed he’d just been seeing things. Turned out he was—and thank God for it.

Jim took out his GPS receiver and called up Isaac’s two little blinking dots. Sooner or later, if Devina was fucking with the guy, she was going to make an appearance in one form or another—and they were going to be there when she did.

“Are there such things as protective spells?” he asked. “Anything I can put around Isaac to keep him safe from her?”

“We can work something out,” Eddie said with an evil little smile. “ ’Bout time to start teaching you that stuff.”

You got that right, Jim thought.

Closing his eyes, he unfurled his wings, their great weight settling on his spine and shoulders as they became visible. “They’re heading into town. Let’s go—”

“Hold up,” Eddie said, his wings appearing. “We need to go by the hotel and get some supplies. Assuming you don’t want us going inside the house?”

“As long as Devina doesn’t show, I’ll stay on the out.”

“This won’t take all that long.”

“It’d better not.”

As he grabbed a couple of running steps to get the momentum working for him, he felt the irony of everything like a great gust under his body: He never would have believed that angels existed or that the eternal battle between good and evil was not only real, but something he’d be fighting in.

Then again, when you weighed in at about two hundred and twenty pounds of solid muscle and were able to haul yourself off the ground with a network of metaphysical feathers . . . the crazy-ass reality you were in had a fuckload of credibility.